Reflection aka Post Mortem on Season 0 of launching and building Thirsty Thirsty DAO in web3.

What TT did:

Launching Membership NFT

We launched our first crowdfunding membership NFT in June 2022, with the goal to give minters VIP dining experiences at top restaurants, wineries, and lands around the world. We onboarded six partners that made up Cohort 1: two restaurant groups, one chef/food studio, one Indigenous-led farm, and two winemakers.

We took this group through five sessions of education workshops led by @Cryptowitch, that filtered all of web3 to share food, bev, farming, and economic redistribution efforts happening in the space and building a case for this dining club experiment.

We worked with Rajat Parr, winemaker and cohort partner, to secure a barrel of high-end Pinot Noir from his cellar to use as a private label for TT minting. We worked with artist Marleigh Culver to make art that was used as both the membership NFT itself and as a real life label for the wine.

We offered two tiers to mint membership and had a custom smart contract built for us by @dheavy. Tier 1 membership promised access to tailored dining experiences at all participating locations + one private label bottle. Tier 2 membership offered only access to the participating locations.

Enough NFTs were minted to cover the overhead cost of the wine and pay the artist’s commission. Friends & Family Tier 2 NFTs were also issued to Cohort partners, core team contributors, past core Thirsty Thirsty contributors pre-web3 shift, and subsequent emergent contributors through April 2023.

Season 0 Launch Team:

@bruxa - founder/partnerships

@cryptowitch - education/ops

@dheavy - developer/strategy

@kim l community - community/marketing

@trian.eth - artist management/grants

Activation Footprint

1. We successfully threw eight key events led by various community members in 2022:

   • Fete launch event w/Cabin at NFT NYC

   • Creamy w/Oddfellows, She Fi, & 0xx at NFT NYC

   • Ferments w/Frothy at ETH CC Paris

   • Magic Space w/Mochi in LA

   • Farm Hang w/280 Project & Spirals + 5 other natural winemakers at SF Blockchain Week

   • Confluence w/Celo, Endaoment, HubCulture, OCN.ai, & Phocus at Art Basel Miami

   • Larder w/Cabin & Id Est Hospitality at ETH Denver ‘23

   • L8 Nite Hang w/Hey Kiddo (Id Est Hospitality) ‘23

2. Produced three activations for other DAOs:

   1. Wine tasting for Bubble in NYC led by @trian

   2. Retreat for Juicebox in Colombia during DevCon by @bruxa & @furda

   3. Wine Garden for Friends with Benefits Festival by @bruxa

3. Led a series of seven free digital wine tasting classes for our community in discord by @bruxa.

4. A community-led wine tasting club emerged in Amsterdam called Wine Cocoon at Selection Sauvage led by @fiowl.

5. A Brand Book for our community and voice was created by @erickamabrie.

6. Numerous design assets for social media and NFTs were produced by @ediciones and @adam.

7. A film guild emerged led by @cowtools and captured footage of:

   • An Intro to Thirsty Thirsty trailer was shot & produced by @cowtools.

   • Full day of Rajat Parr on the Phelan Farms property in Cambria with @cowtools

   • Full day of chef Kelly Whitaker & celeb chef Deuki Hong testing fried chicken recipes with ancestral grains in San Francisco with @nathanzack

   • A week of filming with Juicebox & Juanda during DevCon with testimonials, video podcast footage, and event footage with @furda

   • 16mm photos at Farm Hang SF & tiktok captured by @nathanzack and @empowa.

   • Full event capture at our ETH Denver events for social video creation by @empowa.

8. Through grants we were able to fund solar panels to Juanda’s project in Amazonas through @jango & Juicebox.

9. We are proud alumns of Seed Club’s Cohort 04 - @bruxa and @cryptowitch participated in the cohort leading up to launch.

Hypothesis Going In:

Our hypothesis going in was our existing community pre-web3 would be excited to join us in our new endeavor.

We thought we could be many food & bev lovers first NFT.

We thought dispersed and organic Cohort partners would make it more accessible for members who travel frequently.

We hoped partners would support promotion and proactively push the concept with us on their respective platforms with little requirement or directive from us.

We thought there’d be increasing interest in web3 building during the last Bull Market cycle.

What went well:

We accrued an incredible roster of members & collaborators who are forces in web3 or their respective industries.

We were able to pay off our major overhead.

We were able to leverage our new found web3 network to begin producing events for others and work to capture content around the exciting voices in our network.

We have a small treasury governed by a multi-sig majority to continue investing in community initiatives.

What went wrong:

• We have not had a consistent or reliable channel to communicate with our members, cohort partners, or community.

• All of the participating parties are scattered; many are highly analog and remain infrequent users of Discord where we designated as our primary place of communication.

• We could not retain our launching core team since we could not provide salaries or funds to pay adequately for their work.

• Cohort partners had little bandwidth to participate fully, particularly after the education series concluded.

• Without a liquor license from the ABC (California branch of government overseeing sales & distribution of alcohol) it is illegal to sell and distribute alcohol. Wine fulfillment was challenging and overwhelming for Tier 1 holders.

• In addition, we did not integrate a thorough redemption process after minting therefore data had to be gathered after the fact.

What did we learn:

• DAOs are hard.

• People are magical. Relationships are critical.

• Stating your needs cannot be undervalued.

• DAOs need an agile product to generate a recurring revenue stream.

• Investors were highly selective about investing in DAOs, product market fit has to be evident.

• Web3 is desperate for IRL connections of quality like TT provides

• Intimate gatherings are higher impact than large ones. Localized gatherings create community.

• We can rework our food & bev patronage idea but it needs to be lighter and simpler for folks to use and locations to implement.

• Web3 doesn’t care as much about IG.

• Folks are crazy busy during conferences, food takes the backseat, networking is the priority.

• Memes reign, TT doesn’t have a meme.

• Web3 business models should be tight, light, and meme-able.

• Web3 is like highschool. Happy we’re a community of food freaks & Earth geeks!

We’d love your feedback or love from related to any Season 0 experience you had with Thirsty Thirsty. Fill out this typeform (2mins).

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